The 5 Works You Need to Stop Calling ‘Dystopian’

Our present, as we’ve discussed here before, is beginning to look an awful lot like the exaggerated future of generations past. Dystopian literature—and its evolution over the past 150 years—has become inherently central to conversations about where modern society is headed.

To have those conversations effectively, we need to first be able to define what, exactly, dystopian literature is—but it’s also just as important to able to suss out what it is not. Some science fiction that takes place in dark parallel timelines or futures may seem like it belongs under the same umbrella as works like these, but they lack the ideological critique that’s so crucial to the genre. Of course, that hasn’t stopped us from tossing the term “dystopian” around with abandon. In the interest of public service, then, we’ve compiled a starter list of the most commonly mislabeled works—why they might seem on first blush to be dystopian, and why they’re ultimately not. Commence sniping.

The Time Machine (1895)Author: H.G. WellsWhy It Looks Dystopian: Firstly, Wells’ novella—about a man who builds a Time Machine (the first one, actually, since Wells was the first author to popularize the term “time machine”) and is sent thousands of years into the future—is (mostly) set in a real bummer of a future. It’s laden with metaphors about class inequities, the comforts of privilege, and general human nature—all tentpoles of the dystopian genre.Why It’s Not: The future world in which the Time Traveller accidentally arrives is far too removed from our present to truly be dystopian. We recognize too little of our current society in the Earth of the Eloi and the Morlocks; while their world, in which the Morlocks work as oppressed underground laborers for the aboveground Eloi, is a metaphor for class inequalities and human recklessness, there’s no implication that what we’re doing now will cause something like this in the future. The novel is better categorized as an alien or post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic (think Planet of the Apes).

La jetée (1962)/12 Monkeys (1995)Filmmakers: Chris Marker/Terry GilliamWhy It Looks Dystopian: When Gilliam made his film 12 Monkeys, which was based on Marker’s still-photo featurette La jetée, he had already made a dystopian film. That alone lent his tale, about a time-traveling convict trying to avert pandemic in his future world, some dystopian cred. Indeed, the post-apocalyptic Philadelphia in the movie is exactly the kind of setting one would expect in a dystopian work.Why It’s Not: Much more general science fiction than dystopian, Marker and Gilliam’s works make statements, but they don’t really have anything to do with what humanity has done wrong to get here. The virus that’s wiping humankind off the planet seems like a total fluke, a deus ex machina meant to transform the world into a proper setting, which ultimately functions as just that: a stage on which a character-centric thriller unfolds.

White Noise (1985)Author: Don DelilloWhy It Looks Dystopian: Delillo’s gamechanging novel features a liberal arts professor who teaches “Hitler Studies” courses and the day-to-day life of his family, who are subjected to a nearby chemical spill and its toxic gases. It’s an eerie plot, with an aesthetic that seems slightly futuristic, especially when Jack’s similarly worrisome wife Babette becomes obsessed with obtaining a new drug that suppresses the fear of death (Brave New World prequel, anybody?).Why It’s Not: Jack’s story itself is a work of postmodernism, not speculative or science fiction at all. The bizarro setting simply serves to elevate the themes Delillo was really exploring: how family, fear, death operate on an interpersonal level, and how they relate to what the author saw as the heart (but not the ultimate downfall) of contemporary America.

Sin City (1991-1992)Author: Frank MillerWhy It Looks Dystopian: If you’ve ever felt unsafe walking alone at night in any city in America, you’ll know that Miller’s dark future-noir comics, about a crime-ridden and abysmally doomed Basin “Sin” City, are meant to highlight the corruption and despair that plagues the country’s most economically depressed (and oppressed) neighborhoods. Certainly, Sin City itself could be called dystopian—it does share some of its more chaotic characteristics with the Los Angeles of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.Why It’s Not: While these comics and subsequent movie are certainly bleak, the story is much more a surrealist crime drama than a dystopian text. The story itself contains little direct commentary of the current social order, which is a cornerstone of the genre. What made Sin City this way? is a question that’s never asked, let alone answered. It’s more metaphor than criticism. What’s more, there’s no indication that this is a future world—for all intents and purposes, this could be an alternate reality, which doesn’t apply to dystopia.

The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003)Filmmakers: Andy and Lana WachowskiWhy It Looks Dystopian: Most of humankind has been enslaved, unconscious and plugged into machines, which have taken over the real Earth and created a mind prison, which we unwittingly believe is the world as we’ve always known it—it’s not hard to see how this dark futurism and its hardcore commentary on society’s “sleeping” complacency, in the face of exploitation, could seem dystopian.Why It’s Not: The Matrix is an idea that lives side by side with our own time (or at our 1999), not some future world that serves as criticism for our actions as a society. Sure, there’s a major social critique embedded in the Wachowskis’ manifold opus, but the films are for the most part messianic sci-fi thrillers, focused on the triumph of man (and faith) over machine, not an extended, conceivable parable foretelling humanity’s end.